Vario managing director Matt Kay is missing the randomness of office chat and
thinks our professional life risks being the poorer without it.
I took the opportunity to speak to Matt as he settles into his expanded role as head of Pinsent Masons’ new professional services practice group, Vario. He has made such a success of the firm’s contract lawyer resourcing arm since taking over the lead five years ago, that he has now been given a key role in the wider firm’s journey to transition from a law firm to a ‘professional services business with law at its core’. As Matt is a leading expert in workforce dynamics and resourcing teams for best effect in all sorts of different and changing circumstances, I was keen to hear his insights.
“In Lockdown our days have become far more structured now that
most of our meetings are conducted online”, he told me. “On the plus
side, this has proved to many more bosses that employees can be trusted to be
more, not less, productive when working remotely. But on the other, in a
different sense people’s output is in danger of being watered down because our
interactions are so much more formal, narrowly task-oriented and to that extent
straitjacketed. We no longer bump in to people, have unexpected chats
that spark new ideas which we might then set up a meeting to explore.
Everything is far too scheduled and pre-booked to allow for this serendipity.
Yet we can see now that pre-Lockdown this was so often the way new ideas and
initiatives got started. Teams and Zoom are great for allowing us to
carry on and get done what we need to do to keep things going. But little
happens outside of that.
“Also”, he continues, “We spend a lot of time online with the same
people. The professional bubble of people we interact with is a lot
smaller, ie only the collection of people we need to interact with directly to
do our job. What’s being lost is the ad hoc interactions that normally
just happen by chance in the office. The opportunity to bounce ideas off
someone as you have an unexpected conversation. This is part of the
everyday process of operating in a large office environment. Indeed
modern offices are designed to encourage exactly these sorts of random
interactions, because experience has shown how valuable they are to businesses:
open plan, comfortable seating around coffee areas, breakout spaces. The
challenge for us now is to rediscover this in the virtual environment. The
answer? To build more casualness in to our scheduling.”
We often talk about the importance of business certainty. But Matt has given me a completely new perspective on the value of
unpredictability and uncertainty. Vario is a brand known for turning
established business practices on their head, doing things differently and
leading where others follow. Every time I speak to their managing director he makes me
think again about business norms I’ve accepted as a given. I’m looking forward
to the next chat Matt!
***
Complex personal injury specialists Bolt Burdon Kemp claim to be “Champions” for their clients … and rightly so! They have just conducted a study that reveals only a paltry 2% of British civil and criminal courts are fully accessible. Why haven’t we heard more about this before? Credit to BBK for bringing this to our attention. This clearly needs to change.
As they say in their report, “for many people, going to court is seen as a
necessary evil…a way to help them gain justice or get redress for crimes committed
against them or negligent behaviour that has adversely affected them”. Its’ a daunting process for anyone to go
through, we know. But even more so for clients who have issues with their
vision or hearing, or those with mental health issues or childcare
responsibilities. In 2019 the Government
admitted that 31 out of 56 courthouses in the Greater London were
inaccessible. Did BBK find anything had
improved one year on? You can read the detailed results of their investigation
here.